SANTA CLARA, CA--(Marketwire - September 13, 2010) - Today, ServiceMax announced that innovative food processing equipment manufacturer Marlen International implemented the ServiceMax suite as part of its new approach field service management.
Marlen designs and builds food processing equipment for a variety of products including meat, poultry, fish, vegetables, fruit, bakery, confectioneries, snacks and dairy goods.
Its machines are smart, efficient and leading-edge, and they are a core part of business... But, as Marlen knows, it's not the machines, "It's the Company Behind the Machine that Makes the Difference."
And that's where ServiceMax comes in -- to make the company behind the machines that much more innovative.
Marlen has full-time field service technicians who travel across the U.S. for installations and repairs at more than 300 customer locations. Before ServiceMax, the field service division used a variety of ad hoc tools to manage all customer contact, sales and service information. However, the tools the manufacturer was using just didn't cut it -- the company needed a better, more centralized and accessible tool.
With ServiceMax, Marlen now has:
- A single place to view each customer's complete history. This data is housed in the cloud so it is available outside the office, keeping technicians well informed wherever they are.
- Simplified paperwork so that field service technicians can quickly complete pre-configured work order forms on the road. Previously, it was difficult for technicians to complete work orders on location in cold and wet meat processing centers. Now, the revamped process guarantees that they ask the right questions and get all the information they need to help each customer.
- Used new insights and centralized information to implement a courtesy customer care program to anticipate customer needs.
Built and delivered as a native Force.com application, ServiceMax is a suite of cloud-based tools that help companies completely rethink their approach to post-sales field service and re-imagine customer relationships. The impact on Marlen's business has been remarkable. Marlen used insights from ServiceMax to develop a new courtesy customer care program that helps each service technician locate and visit nearby customers when on another paid service call. These complementary, proactive customer calls help technicians head off customer equipment failures and ensure that all equipment is running optimally to maximize output. This leads to less equipment downtime and increased output, which makes for more efficient, profitable and happier Marlen customers. The program provides cost savings for each customer in three ways:
- Each paid service call for equipment repairs requires a Marlen technician to fly from headquarters in Kansas City to a customer's manufacturing center. Reducing these visits will save approximately $5,000 per customer per year.
- Courtesy equipment tune-ups mean increased product output. If a tune-up provides even a conservative increase in output of one additional pound of product per minute, the customer will see thousands in additional earnings in a single 18-hour day for a single machine.
- A downtime event can mean a loss of as much as 20,000 pounds per hour. If the downtime occurs for even a short span of eight hours before a technician can arrive from Marlen headquarters, customers are looking at a loss of tens, potentially hundreds, of thousands of dollars in lost revenue. The courtesy service calls tune equipment to prevent those downtime events, saving customers potential lost revenue.
"We started with ServiceMax in February 2010. Since then our customer interactions have become more efficient because everyone -- from engineers to field technicians -- now has a single place to view all customer data," said Brad Willsey, director of service at Marlen International. "This may not sound like much, but in reality, it's huge because it means that we have a holistic view of each customer relationship so we know ahead of time when we should schedule a maintenance call instead of waiting for them to call us. It's revolutionized the way we work and has had a huge impact on our customer relationships."
"At ServiceMax we've re-imagined field service to help companies collaborate with shared customer and product information across all their locations. Because we're built on the Force.com platform we're also able to give customers a seamless integration to their salesforce.com CRM solution. Marlen International shows just how powerful this complete customer view can be," said Dave Yarnold, CEO of ServiceMax. "It's a model that has had a big impact on our customers by helping them to send their best on every service call."
About ServiceMax
ServiceMax delivers the future of field service, today. The first and only complete suite of cloud-based, collaborative and mobile field service applications, ServiceMax gives companies unprecedented capabilities in field service management to optimize operations and delight customers. Companies use the ServiceMax suite to handle everything from contract entitlements to scheduling & workforce optimization, to inventory & parts logistics and real-time customer and partner portal access. ServiceMax is built and delivered as a native Force.com cloud application so customers are up and running quickly with a low cost subscription model that is completely integrated with their salesforce.com CRM. Customers include large enterprises such as DuPont, Electrolux, and Pentair, and smaller companies such as Everyday Wireless and Advanta Clean. ServiceMax is headquartered in Santa Clara, CA. For more information, please visit: www.servicemax.com.
Contact Information:
Contact:
Greer Karlis or Derek Korte
LaunchSquad
(415) 625-8555
servicemax@launchsquad.com